allowed to buy land where they served, and in 1760 governors’terms were
extended.
To create an administrative structure of units of uniform size that made sense
geographically, Catherine inaugurated a major mapping and census project. As
John LeDonne points out, if Catherine intended to introduce more officials and
pay them more, then each region needed population sufficient to pay those salaries.
Between 1764 and the implementation of the 1775 administrative reform, land
surveys were undertaken that redrew the administrative map of the empire; these
maps ultimately appeared in a 1792Atlas. Many gubernii lost or gained territory at
the boundaries, sometimes destroying local coherence but in many cases shaping a
more sensible region according to geographical features and natural boundaries.
Even before the administrative reform (1775), new gubernii were being created
as territories were added or consolidated on the borderlands. Activity was prodi-
gious in 1764. Siberia’s sole, huge gubernia at Tobolsk was divided to create a
gubernia at Irkutsk. On the Black Sea steppe the military colonies of New Serbia
and Slaviano-Serbia were combined into the Novorossiia gubernia. To its east
Sloboda Ukraine became Kharkiv gubernia and the Left Bank Hetmanate was
abolished, replaced with a governor generalship. The quasi-military form of
governor-generalship also oversaw Livland, Estland, and Smolensk in the 1760s.
Catherine II’s government was spurred to introduce empire-wide administrative
reform in 1775 not only by Enlightenment conviction but also by social unrest and
success in war. Protest hadflared through thefirst decade of Catherine’s reign—
uprisings in Right Bank Ukraine, New Russia, and Zaporozhia in the late 1760s,
flight of the Kalmyks in 1771, revolt among the Iaik Cossacks in 1772. In 1773– 5
Bashkirs, Nogais, Iaik Cossacks, and Urals peasants rose with Emelian Pugachev in
revolt, exposing the weakness of local defenses and center-periphery connections.
Acquisition of new territory (thefirst partition of Poland, 1772; Turkish war
1768 – 74) also prompted administrative change. Finally, the 1762 release of the
nobility from compulsory service and postwar demobilization left thousands of
local noblemen in need of retirement sinecures. Responding to all these stimuli,
Catherine II issued what was called the Organic Law of 1775: intended to“furnish
the Empire with the institutions necessary and useful for the increase of order of
every kind, and for the smoothflow of justice,”the reform included elements that
improved trade, communications, and tax collection; provided social welfare ser-
vices; put people in closer contact with local judicial and other offices; and provided
employment for local nobility.
The Organic Law increased the number of gubernii, imposed uniform size, and
staffed each with the same institutions across the empire. The provincial level was
abolished; gubernii and districts (uezdy) were composed of uniform population size
(for the gubernia, 300,000–400,000 males, for districts 20,000–30,000 males);
borders were intended to create sensible economic and geographical units that
enhanced connections between center and periphery and among centers of trade
and production; capital cities of gubernia and district were to be centrally located
(some were relocated, many were created from modest villages). The reform
abolished the centuries-old office of all-powerful governor (voevoda), replaced
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